August 29, 2012

Calorie Restriction Flops In Life Extension For Monkeys

For 25 years, the rhesus monkeys were kept semi-starved, lean and
hungry. The males’ weights were so low they were the equivalent of a
6-foot-tall man who tipped the scales at just 120 to 133 pounds. The
hope was that if the monkeys lived longer, healthier lives by eating a
lot less, then maybe people, their evolutionary cousins, would too. Some
scientists, anticipating such benefits, began severely restricting
their own diets.

The results of this major, long-awaited study, which began in 1987, are
finally in. But it did not bring the vindication calorie restriction
enthusiasts had anticipated. It turns out the skinny monkeys did not
live any longer than those kept at more normal weights. Some lab test
results improved, but only in monkeys that were put on the diet when they were old. The causes of death — cancer, heart disease — were the same in both the underfed and the normally fed monkeys.

Oh, boy - where do the people who were betting on this dietary plan go to get the last fifteen years back? The Times described one such intrepid eater back in 2003:

Six years ago, Mr. Sherman put himself on the most brutal
calorie-reduction plan imaginable. Not that he was especially overweight
at 5-foot-5 and 145 pounds. But by switching from pizza and chips to
flaxseed, brewer's yeast and sprouts, he whittled his daily caloric
intake to less than 1,600, and dropped his weight precipitously,
dumbfounding his friends and family.

''Here was a one-time competitive power-lifter who looked to me like a
concentration camp refugee,'' said his wife, Kathy, who almost divorced
him because of it. In those first two years, Mr. Sherman's libido
disappeared, he was cranky, cold and flatulent all the time, and people
suspected he had cancer or AIDS. ''Michael's skin hung off his body like
you see on old men,'' she said.

Paradoxically, old age was
exactly what Mr. Sherman was shooting for. After reading that drastic
calorie restriction slows the aging process in laboratory animals, he
vowed to starve himself to stretch out his golden years into the 22nd
century. If mice, geese and guppies could extend their life span 40 to
50 percent by eating 40 percent less than they wanted, why couldn't he?

''I'm
definitely not one of these guys who says, 'Ooo, 18 more years and I
can retire,' '' said Mr. Sherman, 46, who runs a biotech company in
California near his Silicon Valley home. Now that he's acclimated to the
diet and is somewhat bulked up from weight lifting, he looks more like a
cyclist than a ''Survivor'' finalist. ''I feel very much like I did at
20,'' he said. ''Nothing but blue sky ahead of me.''

Well, he won't get any more blue sky than the rest of us, if we can believe this monkey business.

I'll say it again - with a diet like that, you may (or may not!) live to 120, but it will seem a lot longer.

Shouldn't that be Limp Bizkit? I love it when the DNC tries to be "edgy" and ends up pissing their pants. Kind of like the Super Bowl halftime disasters. Does subjecting the little brats that somehow weren't aborted that there's no daycare for to this garbage music equal a war on wimmenz.

I once asked a Holocaust survivor to describe what it had been like in his village after the Nazis occupied it
"How can I explain it?"he said. "In America every year is like a day. In Novy Yarichev every day was like a year." That's what I imagine life on a starvation diet would be like 365 years in a year.

Phoebe and I tried the South Beach Diet but it didn't allow bananas. But we did like the fake mashed potatoes ( cauliflower) and lots of fish and chicken. Phoebe lost 3 pounds and went from a health Chimp to an overweight monkey.

I played it safe and cheated every night and ate peanut butter sandwiches with gobs of grape jelly.

Some years ago, in Australia, an academic suggested that living POWs of the Japanese were reaping the benefit of the spartan Japanese diet. "Weary" Dunlop, a former POW, and a doctor in the camps, was one of the many critics of this view.

What is really kind of odd about the whole idea is that it is pretty much the opposite of conventional diet and exercise theories. We tend to react viscerally to the unpleasantness of the scheme -- and to note correctly that on the unpleasantness scale, it's like traditional schemes, just incrementally worse (as in more unpleasant.)

But if you actually think about the conventional wisdom, it is that 1) what you eat is important, not just how many calories; and 2) exercise is really good for you. So if you consume 3,000 calories/day of high-quality nutritious food and burn 3,000 calories/day with vigorous aerobic exercise and weight training, this is MUCH better for you than consuming and burning 1,500 calories/day.

If it had really turned out that sitting on your butt all day because you are starving and exhausted is more healthy than eating a nutritious diet and exercising, this would have been a shocking result.

I think we vastly overestimate our ability to affect our level of overall health or longevity. Doesn't mean there won't be therapies in the future, but our genetic heritage plays a much greater role than most are willing to accept

There were two papers discussed here, one each from two populations of monkeys. One had a high sucrose content to its diet and showed benefit from calorie restriction. One didn't have a high sucrose diet and showed no benefit from calorie restriction.

Maybe the take home from this is to restrict sucrose (and probably fructose) intake.